


Hopefully

by Balthuza



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Bad Jokes, I suppose, M/M, Origin Story, Var really likes humans, and Qunari, and dwarfs, basically everything but elves, of sorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-22 01:55:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9577031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Balthuza/pseuds/Balthuza
Summary: It is not what he expected.





	

It is not what he expected.

 

The Keeper doesn’t take much convincing. Deshanna just smiles knowingly and agrees, wishing him good luck and asking to do nothing overly stupid. Seph rolls her eyes at him, but knows better than to ask that. 

Before he is half a day away he realises someone took his stash of the root and put a bunch of healing potions in its place. It’s way too late to go back but he entertains the thought nonetheless. 

 

The Temple is astonishing. He has seen human architecture before, but this place still is something else entirely. And that’s even before mentioning the people everywhere. For the most of the time he can’t really help the way templars’ arms draw his eyes, or the mercenaries, some of them with way less clothes than seems reasonable catch his looks sometimes. One of them winks at him and Var automatically grins in return before friends of the mercenary drag him away. 

Still, it’s nothing like he expected and before too long it is too much. 

Worrying the unlit smoke in one hand moving slowly through the enormous building, he takes a less used passage, trying to go around a garrison of templars trickling slowly through the door. The shouting takes him by surprise and he follows the voice without a conscious thought. 

 

(In another life he decides to go for a smoke just a minute earlier, never has to wait until a bunch of templar passes through the gate, then decides to hunt, elfroot smoke filling his mind and relaxing the strain of anxiety. He is nearly half an hour away from the Temple and has a first row seat for the explosion. The ram he killed dragging? behind him as he makes his way down to Heaven, hoping it’s just a really bad trip. It’s not.)

 

After the chains are gone and he is hailed a Herald of a god he does not believe in, there is always something to be done. Still, he can’t help but wonder, surrounded by more non-elves than ever before in his life. It’s distracting and just a little bit stressful. There’s the Commander who, gently but in no uncertain words tells him he’s not interested in anything but friendship, the dwarf who just snorts knowingly but accepts the sleeveless armor, there are some soldiers, although the way they look at him makes him nervous. 

He hides in the kitchens sometimes, the cook, Steven, grateful to have someone lessen the burden of feeding more and more mouths every day. He let’s Var work on his kills in silence, cutting the meat into pieces more useful for the kitchen and carefully setting the skin aside to pass it on, or prattle endlessly when he smells of elfroot and exhaustion. 

 

(In both lives, he enters the kitchen one day and can see Steven’s patience is running thin. When he is told to help out the man, perhaps a few years younger than him, obviously unskilled, but almost desperate to help in whatever way he can, he smiles, slides next to him and shows him that peeled potatoes really don’t have to be square. Herbert is easy to work with and Var enjoys the company. When he comes back after a long hunt, and Herbert thoughtlessly heals his leg without any warning it’s a surprise for both of them. Steven just snorts and tells them to go back to work or get out, and it breaks Var’s heart a little when he can see Herbert’s surprise at his lack of reaction, and since then he watches the mages a bit closer. Later he tells the advisors to pick whoever they deem suitable for the alliance, but if they think he has any intentions to go to the Therinfal Redoubt and support the templars, they have another thing coming. He tells himself it’s an entirely rational decision and Herbert’s reaction has nothing to do with that.)

 

Redcliffe is where he realizes he might have a problem, and it’s not the ridiculous size of his elfroot stash, which, even he has to admit, is perhaps a bit excessive. The rift in the chantry closes, and the mage turns to him and all Var can think is “I’m so fucked,” followed by “hopefully.”


End file.
